A major issue facing future space exploration is propulsion technologies. The combination of engine mass, propellant mass and associated tankage in traditional propulsion systems imposes practical limits to space missions. The Stafford Synthesis Group (Stafford, America at the Threshold) concluded that future space exploration will require advanced propulsion technologies. Subsequently, NASA conducted the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program (NASA/TM-1998-208400), one intent of which was to identify new propulsion concepts requiring either minimal or no propellant mass. Meeting this goal requires “discovering fundamentally new ways to create motion, presumably by manipulating inertia, gravity, or by any other interactions between matter, fields, and spacetime.”
Field propulsion employs electromagnetic field effects for generating propulsion forces, expels no reaction mass, and therefore effectively has an infinite specific impulse. Prior to modern electrodynamics, it had previously been accepted that magnetic field interactions could not be used to produce a propellantless propulsion system due to the required compliance with Newton's Third Law (NTL). However, physicists have known since at least 1952 of apparent violations of NTL, which has led to over thirty US patents and at least two dozen foreign patents being issued for propellantless propulsion devices. Most importantly, recent experimental investigations conducted by NASA with an EM drive device (White, AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power) have definitively confirmed that EM field propulsion is a reality.
One of the important characteristics of an electromagnetic (EM) wave is that it can transport energy from point to point. Stebens (Stebens, Forces on Fields) proves mathematically that in electromagnetism, as in Newton's solid body mechanics, the force on matter from an electromagnetic field is balanced by an equal and opposite force from matter on the field. Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman (The Feynman Lectures on Physics), among others, noted that the magnetic interaction between two charged particles moving orthogonally to each other apparently does not satisfy NTL in classical Newtonian dynamics; but, if the changing momentum of the electromagnetic fields of the two particles is included, then overall momentum is conserved.
Although isolated moving charges may apparently violate NTL, if they are confined as part of a complete closed circuit the application of Gauss' Law results in net forces on each circuit being equal and opposite in accordance with NTL. However, the Biot-Savart Law from classical physics has recently been used to prove that the magnetic field from a rectangular conducting coil, acting on a specific geometric configuration of an isolated current segment, generates a unidirectional force on the coil-segment system (Purvis, USPTO Private Communication). The present invention is an engineering design developed from this “segmented current” geometry which avoids the “circuit completion” problem so as to create an electromagnetic field spacecraft propulsion system. This electromagnetic field spacecraft propulsion system, which does not require expendable propellant and thus has an effectively infinite specific impulse, is an advanced propulsion technology which will significantly impact both manned and unmanned activities in space.